5 reasons that royal watching is our new favorite trend
Total media domination? The Kardashians have nothing on the Windsors in 2018. Here’s why… By AJESH PATALAY
The baby
First there was George, then Charlotte. And this April, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge welcome Royal Baby Number Three. As you might expect, three questions are foremost in most people’s minds. Boy or girl? Name? And could the new arrival possibly be as cute as his or her siblings? The first two of these questions are not only a matter of good-hearted speculation but possible financial gain, as bookmakers are offering compelling odds on the various options. (At one point, there were 4/1 odds that Kate and William were expecting twins.) For a boy, one bookmaker has odds on at 11/10, with 10/11 for a girl, which at least has the benefit of numerical symmetry. As for names, Alice currently tops one list, with Victoria, Arthur and Albert not far behind. Our favorite? Grace (at 16/1). Because can’t you just imagine the headlines? “Coo de Grace”? “Will and Grace”? “Heir and Grace”?
The wedding
If the world is on countdown to one event this year, it’s the wedding of His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales to Ms. Rachel Meghan Markle at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle on May 19. At the time of writing, we know about the engagement ring (designed by the Prince himself using stones from his late mother’s collection and a large diamond from Botswana, and created by the jeweler Cleave & Company). We also know that Sarah Ferguson has been invited after all (despite early reports that she wouldn’t be, as she wasn’t invited to Kate and William’s big day). Unknown is the seating plan in the chapel, which has a capacity of 800; the identity of the best man (the Duke of Cambridge has yet to be asked, apparently); the choice of maid of honor; and the designer of the dress. The anticipation is Game of Thrones finale-worthy.
The other wedding
It seems inevitable that Princess Eugenie of York’s wedding to former London nightclub manager Jack Brooksbank on October 12, also at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, will suffer from poor-cousin syndrome, given that it follows, well, her cousin’s wedding this spring. But who knows? The Prince Harry/Meghan Markle festivities of five months before may seem like a distant memory by then, and we could be clamoring for yet another royal jamboree. At the same time, how clever of Eugenie and Jack, a couple who have pursued their relationship relatively under the radar, to tie the knot in the long shadow of that other Windsor wedding. So, what can we expect from their reception? Lots of art-world guests (the Princess is currently Associate Director of Hauser & Wirth gallery and was formerly at Paddle8), and possibly George Clooney and Rande Gerber, too (Brooksbank is the brand ambassador for their Casamigos tequila).
The successor
Few things are worth anticipating more than the new season of Netflix’s The Crown, likely hitting small screens at the end of the year. Yes, we will miss Claire Foy, who was masterful as the young Queen Elizabeth in the first two seasons (and we wish her well in her less-than-queenly follow-up as Lisbeth Salander in The Girl in the Spider’s Web). But could we be more overjoyed to hear that she will be succeeded in a majestic piece of casting by the divinely-right-for-the-role Olivia Colman? In short, no. Granted, the upcoming seasons look set to cover arguably the dullest period in the monarch’s reign, from the mid-’60s to the mid-’80s. But putting the rum into the decorum will be an adult Prince Charles as he weds Diana, the breakdown of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon’s marriage, and Harold Wilson, surely the most entertaining Prime Minister since Winston Churchill. Plenty of room, then, for Colman to flex her comedic and dramatic muscles.
The divorce
Some of us are still reeling from the first season of Ryan Murphy’s Feud, which chronicled the bitter relationship between Hollywood legends Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. But for Season 2, expected in late 2018, it’s onwards and upwards – namely to Britain and the upper echelons of the British aristocracy – as the focus shifts to Prince Charles and Diana, covering the period from their divorce in 1996 to Diana’s fatal car crash a year later. As Murphy puts it, it will follow “the dissolving of a fairy tale”. The question of who will play Charles and Diana is just about as juicy as who will be named the next Bond. But royalists needn’t despair: Murphy proved in his earlier show, The People v. O.J. Simpson, that his aim is not sensationalism (that show gave us shades of gray where we only got black and white the first time around). As executive producer Alexis Martin Woodall puts it, this season of Feud is in many ways “a woman’s story”, about someone who was only 19 years old when she married and had to find her own way, royal or not: “I think there’s a really human quality to it.”
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